Thursday, December 11, 2008

Chicago: Immigrant Workers Set an Example

Victory at Republic!Lee Sustar, Socialist WorkerDecember 11, 2008

WITH A unanimous vote, workers at the Republic Windows & Doors plant in Chicago ended their six-day factory occupation late on December 10 after Bank of America and other lenders agreed to fund about $2 million in severance and vacation pay as well as health insurance.

"Everybody feels great," said a tired but beaming Armando Robles, president of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) Local 1110. [...]

[...] According to labor organizer and journalist Jorge Mújica, immigrants rights activists supported the Republic workers not only because they are mostly Latino immigrants, but because they are literally fighting the same institutions. [...]

Chicago worker Raul Flores’s job is gone, but he’s still there. "I've got a family to support, so I've got to do whatever it takes," he says. "The economic situation is not good, but I can't just wait for something to happen to me."

That puts Flores in the same boat as millions of other U.S. workers. Last month alone 533,000 workers lost their jobs, the highest figure in 34 years.[...]

The Immigrant Story That Wasn't: Laid Off Republic Windows Employees Just Regular Working StiffsEsther J. Cepeda, Huffington PostDecember 9, 2008

I am absolutely stunned that the peaceful sit in at the Republic Windows and Doors factory and warehouse has not been stuck in the ghetto of "immigrant story" by our local and national media.

Indeed, most outlets here and nationally have so far ignored the fact that the workers are mostly brown-eyed and brown-skinned. Just months ago the three hundred laid-off workers who were let go without notice -- and without their owed pay -- would have all been ignored, and reviled, because they were, as I so often heard, "just more protesting immigrants." [...]

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